1. Field
Embodiments of the present invention relate to technologies for full motion live video in tactical and other environments utilizing various apparatuses and methods.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventional digital television (TV) channels contain content that has been controlled and aggregated at a central studio to form a composite TV channel that is centrally broadcast as one combined video. The combined video is transmitted to many end-user TV screens, all of which view the same composite TV channel at the same time. Cable providers also transmit/broadcast several video signals (i.e. composite and internet protocol (IP) multicast) to end-users. The former technology is generally one-way and each channel is created at a central studio/location and delivered to all end-users uniformly. This combination of multiple videos/images on the same screens simultaneously, is also known as a mosaic video channel.
There are a number of techniques for presenting multiple video streams on a single personal computer (PC) screen. In one technique, multiple videos are combined into a single combined image which is transmitted to end users as a single image. Several techniques (with variations on the same basic theme) are also available for reducing the bandwidth used to transmit these signals. One such technique employs multiple low resolution thumbnail images, transmitted as a data stream to tell the user what video streams are available for viewing. A focus stream containing a series of high resolution images from a selected source are displayed in a relatively large area on the viewer's screen. A user can switch the “focus” stream by clicking on the associated thumbnail.
These interactive techniques generally employ a tactical viewer for the end user. The tactical viewer may be Internet-browser-based and may be slaved to an Internet web server. These techniques are meant to disseminate only a handful of videos to a similarly small number of end users. In practice, if more than one user simultaneously clicked on several different thumbnails at nearly the same time, or a thumbnail was selected that was different than the current high resolution image being sent in the “focus” stream, an uncontrolled situation would result, in which a user of the receiving group would not be able to independently control which focus video was on their screen.